New powerful soft x-ray sources may be able to access intensities needed for backward Raman amplification (BRA) of x-ray pulses in plasmas. However, high plasma densities, needed to provide enough coupling between the pump and seed x-ray pulses, cause strong damping of the Langmuir wave that mediates energy transfer from the pump to the seed pulse. Such damping could reduce the coupling, thus making efficient BRA impossible. This work shows that efficient BRA can survive despite the Langmuir wave damping significantly exceeding the linear BRA growth rate. Moreover, the strong Langmuir wave damping can automatically suppress deleterious instabilities of BRA to the thermal noise. The class of “quasitransient” BRA regimes identified here shows that it may be feasible to observe x-ray BRA within available x-ray facilities.

• Received 27 March 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.80.046409